Don't Miss This Test During Pregnancy

The Nervous System Test Every Pregnant Mom Should Know About

But there’s one incredibly important system that often isn’t being measured during traditional prenatal care: your nervous system.

And that matters because your nervous system is essentially the air traffic control center of your entire body. It helps regulate your stress response, hormones, immune function, digestion, sleep, and your ability to adapt to everything pregnancy throws your way.

At Thrive Chiropractic, our approach to prenatal chiropractic care in Cranberry Township, PA looks beyond aches and pains. Through Neurologically Focused Chiropractic Care and INSiGHT Scans, we want to understand how well your nervous system is adapting during one of the biggest physical and emotional transitions of your life.

Because pregnancy isn’t just about growing a baby.

It’s about creating the healthiest environment possible for both of you.

Your Nervous System Is Running the Show

When we think about health during pregnancy, we often hear about hormones, nutrition, immune health, sleep, and physical changes.

But what helps regulate all of those systems?

Your nervous system.

Think of it like the air traffic control center at a busy airport. You can have perfectly good airplanes, runways, and pilots, but if communication from the control tower becomes overwhelmed, things can get chaotic pretty quickly.

Your brain and body are constantly communicating through your nervous system, helping you respond and adapt to your environment.

And pregnancy gives your body A LOT to adapt to.

Your hormones are changing. Your center of gravity is shifting. Your sleep may look different. Your family dynamics are changing. There may be financial stress, work changes, appointments, birth decisions, and the general realization that another tiny human is about to depend on you for everything.

That’s enough to make anyone’s nervous system hit the gas pedal.

The Gas Pedal vs. The Brake Pedal

We often explain the nervous system using a simple analogy: the gas pedal and the brake pedal.

Your gas pedal is your sympathetic nervous system, commonly known as your fight or flight response.

This response isn’t bad. If you encounter a bear in the woods, we absolutely want your nervous system to hit the gas! Your heart rate increases, stress hormones kick in, and your body prepares to survive.

The problem comes when the bear is no longer a bear.

It’s your overflowing inbox. The toddler meltdown. The 2 AM pregnancy insomnia. The never ending to do list. The worry about birth.

When the gas pedal stays pushed down for too long, your nervous system can become stuck in a state of dysregulation.

Meanwhile, your brake pedal, the parasympathetic nervous system, supports rest, digestion, relaxation, growth, and recovery.

Ideally, your nervous system should be able to move between these states appropriately. It should respond when stress is present and then return to a calmer, more regulated state afterward.

That ability to adapt is what we call resilience.

Why Nervous System Regulation Matters During Pregnancy

Here’s where this becomes even more important for expecting moms.

Your baby is developing alongside you.

Throughout pregnancy, mom and baby are deeply connected, and the environment surrounding that development matters. This is one reason supporting mom’s ability to regulate and adapt to stress can be such an important part of prenatal wellness.

We want mom’s body to have the greatest opportunity possible to rest, recover, adapt, and prepare for birth.

And we want to support that before she feels like she’s hanging on by a thread in those final weeks.

This is why we believe prenatal care shouldn’t only be reactive.

Instead of waiting for pain, poor sleep, stress, or other challenges to become overwhelming, we can proactively look at how the nervous system is functioning.

That’s where technology becomes incredibly helpful.

What Are INSiGHT Scans?

At Thrive, we use a set of neurological scans called INSiGHT Scans to better understand how a patient’s nervous system is functioning and adapting to stress.

One of these scans evaluates heart rate variability, or HRV.

HRV gives us valuable information about the balance and adaptability of the nervous system, including how the body is handling stress.

Rather than simply saying, “I feel stressed,” we can gather objective information that helps us understand how the nervous system is functioning.

The additional scans help us look at other patterns of neurological stress and how the body is adapting to physical demands.

That can be especially valuable during pregnancy as posture, weight distribution, hormones, and your center of gravity continue changing.

The scans are noninvasive and radiation free, making them an incredibly useful tool for our prenatal patients.

Most importantly, they give us a road map.

We aren’t guessing about what your nervous system needs. We can see patterns, establish a baseline, and monitor how those patterns change throughout pregnancy.

What Does Neurologically Focused Prenatal Chiropractic Care Look Like?

Whether you just saw those two pink lines or your due date is next week, supporting your nervous system can begin wherever you are in your pregnancy journey.

The first step is establishing a baseline with your INSiGHT Scans.

From there, gentle and specific prenatal chiropractic adjustments are based on what we find in your scans and your individual needs.

One area we pay particular attention to is the upper neck because of its relationship with neurological function, including the vagus nerve.

The vagus nerve plays an important role in the parasympathetic side of the nervous system, or what we like to call the brake pedal.

Our goal with Neurologically Focused Chiropractic Care is to help improve brain and body communication and support the nervous system’s ability to adapt and regulate.

We then perform progress scans throughout care rather than simply relying on how you feel.

Pregnancy changes quickly. Your body at 10 weeks isn’t dealing with the same demands as your body at 35 weeks!

Tracking those changes allows us to continually evaluate how your nervous system is adapting.

And that support doesn’t have to end after delivery.

Postpartum is another massive transition for mom, and baby is suddenly adapting to an entirely new world. That’s why we also love checking mom and baby after birth.